“Now you know what to get me.” He got up from the table. “I hate to cut this short, but I have an early flight tomorrow.”
“But you just got back.”
“I left a few things unfinished so I wouldn’t miss our date.”
My jaw dropped. “You came back from London to take me on a date?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me as I climbed out of the booth to stand next to him. “Trying too hard?” he asked.
I laughed. “Definitely.” I’d never been out with a man who tried half as hard. “You didn’t have to do that. I would have waited.”
He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Maybe you could have. But I couldn’t.”
Chapter 23
I read Beckett’s chapters as soon as he dropped me off at my apartment. With his kiss still lingering on my lips, I devoured his words.
From his first sentence to his last mark of punctuation, I was enthralled. Beckett weaved a setting full of life and characters so real, I could picture having coffee with them. His words made my skin crawl, my breath hitch, and my heart race.
I read the last sentence and wanted more.
I scrambled to my phone and scrolled down to Beckett’s name. He answered on the second ring.
“Hello?” The deep gravel of his voice made my belly clench.
“Hi.”
“Everything okay? Did you forget something?”
“Is Michael going to come back?” I blurted. “It’s the only thing that will save Isobel.”
Beckett’s low laugh rumbled. “You read it so soon?”
I pulled in a breath, trying to get my words to slow down, my heart to quit racing. “Beckett, this is…” I scrolled back to the first page and read the first line again.The floor bled.I stood up and went to my door. “I’m locking my door right now.”
“You should have done that as soon as I left.”
His voice sent a shiver down my spine. Beckett hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said his novel was dark and gritty. My skin tingled, and my heartbeat drummed in my chest.
“You were right,” I said. “This book is scary. But it’s so great. It reminds me of Perry Griffin’s early novels.” I waved a hand in the air that Beckett couldn’t see. “Not the last one. It was commercial crap.”
Beckett’s deep laugh rumbled over the line. “You readWoven Uprising?”
I gripped the phone tighter. “Don’t try to change the subject. You do that every time I ask about your writing. Or you kiss me and I forget what we were talking about.” I couldn’t think straight when Beckett kissed me.
“I wish I could kiss you right now.”
My lips tingled. We’d kissed the whole ride home in the limo and kissed again at the door. It had been hard not to invite him in for more, but we’d both agreed to wait.
“I can’t wait to read more,” I said.
“Does that mean I’m getting a second date?”
“Do I have to wait until then to read anything else?”
“Is that a yes?”
My belly tightened and my chest ached from the drumming of my heart. “Yes.”
